Sweetwater Seduction

by Johnston, Joan

  Besides, there were perfectly good reasons why she had never married. And no one could say she hadn't led a perfectly fulfilled life all these years without a man by her side. Why, she most certainly had!

  Besides, if Miss Devlin hadn't rushed into marriage it was because she had learned from bitter experience that having a husband didn't necessarily ensure happiness. She had seen firsthand the pain and suffering that could result from loving the wrong man. Just such a tragedy had left Eden orphaned at eleven when she had buried her mother, a woman who had made the mistake of marrying in haste and for love. That was enough to give anyone pause for thought. Miss Devlin had simply taken twenty-nine years to think about it.

  It wasn't that she hadn't dregetting married someday. And lately, when she lay alone in her bed, she admitted she might have missed something by denying herself a husband and children all these years. With her thirtieth birthday looming on the horizon, she had begun actually making lists in her head, weighing all the advantages of marriage against the risks.

  That was how Miss Devlin had come up with the notion that she might avoid her mother's mistake if she simply didn't fall in love with the man she planned to marry. Of course, Eden intended to like him a great deal. But that wasn't the same thing. As long as she didn't love him, she would never be vulnerable—he could never break her heart. All this assuming, of course, that she could find some man willing to marry her whom she also liked well enough to take for a husband. So maybe she had earned the unflattering title of spinster, but it was a title she was not averse to seeing changed.

  “Miss Devlin?” Bliss's tentative inquiry from the bedroom door called Miss Devlin's attention back to the matters at hand. She squared her shoulders and turned to face Bliss.

  “Why don't you come out here and sit down at the dining room table with me, Bliss. It's time we talked about what you're doing out of bed in the middle of the night.”

  There was enough scold in Miss Devlin's voice to make Bliss quail. Nonetheless, she lifted her chin and replied, “I had to come. There's something I have to tell you.”

  “What's so important it couldn't wait until Monday?”

  Bliss paused dramatically and then blurted, “I'm going to have a baby!”

  Burke Kerrigan spent the entire ride to Sweetwater mulling his reaction to the enigmatic Miss Devlin. There was a certain kind of woman he usually associated with, and it wasn't schoolmarms. Yet he had found himself baiting her and waiting to see if she would rise and take the lure. He had enjoyed sparring verbally with her. In fact, she was the first woman he'd known who'd given as good as she'd got.

  He hadn't missed her physical reaction to him either, which had been totally female. He felt sure, however, seeing how flustered she had become, that she hadn't understood her feelings. It might be fun, he thought with a grin, to strip off all those straitlaced, stiff-necked, stuffy old layers to see what lay beneath her priggish spinster's facade. He suspected what he would find might be well worth the effort.

  Kerrigan shook his head when he thought of the galling things he had said to the schoolmarm. Truth to tell, he had deserved her slap. He ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek. The lady sure packed a wallop. But she was a big woman. Not big, exactly, but tall. Not that he held that against her. In fact, he found something decidedly exciting about the thought of having that much woman in his arms.

  He had been on the verge of thinking her plain, but realized that between her flashing gray eyes and her striking cheekbones with their scattering of charming freckles, the word didn't fit. He'd had to turn away from herone point for fear she would detect his visible response to the magnificent figure she had revealed beneath that shapeless nightgown.

  He couldn't help grinning again when he remembered the ridiculous nightcap she had been wearing. Where had she gotten such a thing? There had been the promise of a wealth of burnished hair constrained beneath that prim cap, as he was sure there was a wealth of passion constrained beneath Miss Devlin's prim exterior.

  Kerrigan sobered. He had no business thinking such thoughts about the local schoolteacher. He had other matters to attend to, and once he did, he would be leaving this town to move on to another. He was a drifter. A hired gun. There was no time or place in his life to tangle with a sharp-tongued spinster like Miss Devlin.

  It was nearly midnight by the time Kerrigan arrived in town, and the saloon was still noisy with the sounds of Saturday night revelry. The Dog's Hind Leg was like dozens of other such establishments Kerrigan had seen in his lifetime, only on a smaller scale, and he easily passed it by in favor of the Townhouse Hotel across the street.

  But appealing as he found the idea of a room with a bed that wasn't as hard or lumpy as the ground, Kerrigan was too keyed up to sleep. After setting his gear at the foot of the four-poster bed, and rinsing his face in the bowl of water on the washtable, he headed back downstairs to the saloon.

  A man wearing a badge stood at the door to the Dog's Hind Leg, barring Kerrigan's entry. “Leave your weapon outside,” the deputy said.

  “My gun stays with me,” Kerrigan replied, distastefully perusing the disorganized pile of handguns on a nearby table.

  The deputy surveyed the gunslinger, noting his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the way his gun was tied down low. “Don't want no trouble,” the deputy said.

  Kerrigan smiled, and for the second time that evening said, “I'm a peaceful man.”

  The deputy waited, but the tall stranger stood there, hard as whetstone. Deputy Joe Titman wasn't used to being defied. The local cowboys knew that if they didn't obey Deputy Joe, they would have to deal with Sheriff Reeves, and that was a different matter altogether. But that wasn't going to help him now. The stranger looked touchy as a teased rattler. Deputy Joe took an involuntary step back from the menacing man and said, “Sheriff Reeves ain't gonna like it.”

  As Kerrigan stepped across the threshold into the saloon, he glanced over his shoulder at the fidgeting deputy. “Tell the sheriff to see me if he has a problem.”

  Kerrigan didn't give either the sheriff or his deputy another thought, simply stepped up to the bar and ordered a whiskey. The bartender gave him a wary look when he realized he was still wearing his gun, but hurried to serve him. Kerrigan picked up his whiskey glass and turned around to lean his elbows on the bar. He hooked his boot on the footrail as he surveyed the room. He could have drawn a line down the middle of the saloon based on the division between nesters and cowboys.

  He heard numerous voices with a Texas drawl coming from the cowboy tables, reminding him of home. Then, to his surprise, he heard a distinctive voice he recognized as Texan on the nester side of the room. That was odd enough to make him seek out the owner of the voice—and find the skinny face and gut-shrunk form of Levander Early. A scant year ago Kerrigan had run Levander out of Montana for rustling cattle. What was a man so handy with a running iron doing on the nester side of the room?

  While Kerrigan was staring, Levander glanced up and the hired gun saw the yellow cat's eyes that had plagued him in the recent past. Levander turned and said something to the man seated next to him, then rose and headed toward Kerrigan.

  Levander Early was thin as a bed slat and short as a tail-hold on a bear. The coveralls and heavy farmer's boots he wore made him look like a boy dressed in a man's clothes. Kerrigan wasn't deceived. Levander Early might have been a young man, but he had long since reserved himself a seat in hell.

  Levander ordered a whiskey from the bartender, and once it arrived drank it all down before he turned to face Kerrigan.

  “When I told you to head south from Montana and keep going,” Kerrigan said, “I had a mite farther south in mind than northeastern Wyoming.”

  “I'm sure you did,” Levander said with a disarming grin. �
�But I gotta tell you, Kerrigan. When I got this far they were practically givin' away land, just givin' it away! Homestead Act or some such. I said to myself, Levander, I said, this is heaven. And suspectin' how I gotta spend the next life in the otherwheres, I decided to spend this one here.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you really are a farmer?” Kerrigan asked incredulously.

  “I surely am,” Levander confirmed. “Got me a house built, got land plowed, even got a few cows of my very own—the kind that gives milk. So you see, I'm a reformed man.”

  “I see.” But Kerrigan was having a hard time believing.

  “I come over to ask you not to spread the bad word about me. I done started over fresh. And I figger I deserve a second chance same as the next 'poke.”

  Before Kerrigan had a chance to respond to Levander's plea, he was distracted by a crescendo of murmuring voices. A single glance told him what he needed to know. Sheriff Reeves had arrived. When Kerrigan turned back to Levander, he discovered the new-made farmer had slipped away. Levander never had been one with much use for the law. That, at least, hadn't changed.

  “From my deputy's description I had a feeling it might be you,” Sheriff Reeves said. “Damn if it ain't.”

  “Howdy, Felton. Been a coon's age.” Kerrigan extended his hand and the sheriff reached out and shook it. “Never thought I'd see you wearing a badgeed to be you got called when I was too busy to take the job.”

  The sheriff merely smiled at the friendly jibe and said, “You here in Sweetwater on business, Kerrigan?”

  “Sure am.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  The two men knew each other well, yet they were a study in contrasts: one was light, one dark; one asked, one demanded; one shared himself with others, one didn't; one had settled down, one was still drifting.

  “I don't have to ask who hired you,” the sheriff said. “The only one with a bankroll big enough to pay you is the Association. Oak made a mistake hiring you, Kerrigan. I want you to ride out of here tonight.”

  Kerrigan took a sip of whiskey. “You know I can't do that, Felton.”

  “That's too bad. I've got enough problems in Sweetwater without adding a gunslinger to the lot.”

  “You know I never slap leather without honest provocation.”

  “Problem is, you're liable to get it here,” the sheriff said. “Things are bad, Kerrigan. I don't intend for them to get worse.”

  “Time was we got along peaceful as two six-guns on the same belt,” Kerrigan said.

  “More like two bobcats in the same sack,” the sheriff retorted.

  It was hard for two men who had ridden so many gullies together to find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.

  “Damn you, Kerrigan,” Felton said with a snort of disgust. “I wish it'd been somebody else Oak got to do his dirty work. I like you too much to be the one who ends up hanging you.”

  Kerrigan grinned. “I'm a long way from that, I hope. What brought you to Sweetwater, Felton?”

  “Got tired of traveling, being lean in the belly and on the run from the law. Decided I wanted a place of my own, a wife and kids.”

  “You make enough as a lawman to have all that?”

  “I do well enough,” the sheriff said, averting his eyes.

  “You still a gambling man?”

  “I play poker now and then.”

  “You still a ladies' man?”

  Felton thought of Darcie Morton, the madam over in Canyon Creek who had been taking care of his needs since he had become Sweetwater. While he and Kerrigan had shared women in the past, he found himself reluctant to mention Darcie's name. He smiled and said, “I ain't seeing anyone I'd care to share with the likes of you, if that's what you're asking.”

  “You're just mad because Doralee Smithers liked kissing a clean-shaven face like mine better than one with a prickly old mustache like yours.”

  Felton smiled and stroked his bushy blond mustache. “That's all right. I'm sure the lady I got picked out to be my wife won't give you the time of day.”

  “So, you really are settling down. If I know you she's a real looker.”

  Felton returned Kerrigan's grin. “Maybe you don't know me as well as you think. Actually, she's a plain-looking woman.”

  “Then it must be true love.”

  “Love has nothing to do with it.”

  At Kerrigan's questioning glance the sheriff explained. “A man who's wintered hard as many years as I have needs a special kind of wife. Miss Devlin is going to lend me the respectability I need to be a big man around here someday.”

  Kerrigan felt a prickle of unease at Felton's naming of his chosen bride. Surely there couldn't be two Miss Devlins in Sweetwater. “This Miss Devlin of yours, she wouldn't happen to be the local schoolteacher, would she?”

  “How'd you know?”

  Kerrigan bit down the epithet that sprang to mind. It was no business of his who Felton married. No business at all. Miss Devlin would sure clip his horns, all right. Aw, hell. If Felton Reeves wanted her, Burke Kerrigan wasn't going to stand in his way.

  “I wish you luck in your courtship, Felton,” Kerrigan said as he shook hands with the sheriff.

  Once the congratulations were over, the gunslinger considered himself well rid of the spinster. He stood at the bar with Felton and drank to old times, to fast draws and faster horses.

  Nevertheless, Miss Devlin's flashing eyes, her sharp tongue, and her tall, seductive form stayed on his mind the rest of the night.

  Chapter 3

  When you got nothin' to lose, try anythin'.

  MISS DEVLIN HAD COMFORTED BLISS AS BEST SHE could and promised she would somehow find a solution to the dilemma that beset her young pupil. Miss Devlin had also reassured Bliss that while the gunshot wound in Hadley's shoulder was serious because he had lost so much bloodn't deadly. With rest and care, he would recover completely.

  After walking Bliss home, Miss Devlin spent a restless night plagued by unsettling visions of herself being held in the arms of a tall, dark-eyed man who bore a suspicious resemblance to the gunslinger. Such thoughts were so totally outside the normal realm of Miss Devlin's dreams (which, while adventuresome, had never included a dashing male figure) that she wasn't sure how to escape them. So instead she fully indulged them, reasoning that once she had let her wayward thoughts run their course, she would be free of them.

  It was a foolish idea, Miss Devlin later conceded, because she awoke to find herself aching in new and quite alarming places. When Eden viewed herself in the mirror as she performed her ritual toilette, she was stunned to find her gray eyes almost lambent. Somehow, although she had never left the chaste confines of her bedroom, she felt disgracefully compromised.

  Quite abruptly the dreamy look left her eyes, to be replaced by outrage. How dare that rude, violent, unprincipled gunslinger intrude on her private life! She simply would not allow it. Miss Devlin grimaced at her image in the mirror. She hoped she would have more success controlling her thoughts than she was having in confining her burnished curls in the tight bun arranged low on the back of her neck.

  A narrow-brimmed hat, banded by a rust-colored ribbon that matched her dress, hid the worst of the rebellion. She straightened the tatted ivory lace collar that was the only decoration on the practical merino dress, draped it with a navy blue shawl, squared her shoulders, and marched out the door for church muttering denials of the potent stirrings the gunslinger had aroused in her.

  Even in church she encountered unpleasant reminders of the awful situation that had brought the gunslinger to town. Nesters sat on hard wooden pews along one side of the chilly town meetinghouse that also served as a church, ranchers on the other. A narrow aisle that ran down the middle of the room might as well have been the Powder R
iver, so little was the chance that either group might cross to greet the other. Miss Devlin found it especially uncomfortable because the simple act of sitting down meant having to choose sides.

  Oak Westbrook never came to church because he contended, “God knows where to find me if he wants me,” so Regina sat alone. Yet the sharp-eyed look the rancher's wife gave Miss Devlin made it clear she didn't wish for company. Eden settled herself next to Bliss and her family, thinking at least she would be able to determine how the troubled child had passed the night.

  The absence of Hadley Westbrook and Big Ben Davis had cast a pall over the congregation that no amount of Reverend Simonson's uplifting words could conquer. Miss Devlin secretly felt the reverend's failure might well have resulted from his sermon entitled “Love Thy Neighbor.”

  Through whispers spoken as the collection plate was being passed, Miss Devlin discovered that Bliss had spent a sleepless night. She promised to ask Regina Westbrook for the most recent news on Hadley's condition and report back to her concerned pupil.